


Defences

by Anima Nightmate (faithhope)



Series: All For One and, well, you know the rest... [11]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: (if you squint), A lot more awkwardness, Accidental femdom, Awkwardness, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Chess, Double Entendre, Femdom, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Memories, Minor Original Character(s), Sparring, Spoilers for s2e7 - A Marriage of Inconvenience, Spoilers for s2e8 - The Prodigal Father, Training, Unarmed Combat, thoughtfulness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-24
Updated: 2018-09-16
Packaged: 2019-07-01 18:50:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,941
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15779994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithhope/pseuds/Anima%20Nightmate
Summary: Look at this fancy, bloody stupid room and fancy, bloody stupid clothes. You imagined yourself someone who had adventures, and you were just another doll in a different costume, playacting for, for other people. Again.None of it was real.None of it!And the storm of tears carries her off again. She rather fancies she might break something – something that would make a satisfying sound and a terrible mess. She also knows that she won’t, because. Because.***Constance is locked deep in mourning and guilt. What will it take to reach her?





	1. In Waiting

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven’t read any of this series before, it might be useful to know that, in this version, Athos and d’Artagnan have been [lovers for a few months](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13679385), and that, since Constance and d’Artagnan got back together and he confessed as much to her, the three of them have [spent a night together](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14019126). Yes, in _that_ way…
> 
> Everything else is canon, to the best of my ability.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which we touch on obstacles.

The knock on the door is relatively quiet, but firm and fast. There’s a pause.

“Madame Bonacieux?”

She opens her mouth, clenches her throat to call out, finds it dry, swallows. “I’m not receiving anyone.”

Some murmuring.

“Er, Madame?” She clenches her jaw in silence. “Madame, there’s a messenger here from the King’s Musketeers.”

Her jaw tightens even further, and she swears she hears her teeth start to crack.

“Tell Monsieur d’Artagnan that I’m receiving no-one. Especially him.”

More murmuring.

“Surely, Madame…”

“I am,” she grates out, “ _very_ sure.”

Still further murmuring, and she wonders, briefly, if she can get back into bed, bundle the covers and every pillow over her head and either sleep or suffocate her way into silence.

_That’s a horrible thought._

You can shut up and all – I’m not listening to you.

_Well…_

Outside, “Monsieur,” he’s telling him, in serious, discreet tones, “she will take no visitors. The other Musketeer came, several times. _Many_ times. She would have none of him.”

“Then I’ll wait,” he says, quietly, in equally serious tones. The Palace servant finds in him an almost reassuring gravity. It is offset by the impression of deep melancholy bordering on indifference, and something else surging beneath.

He swallows. “As Monsieur wishes,” and leaves, nearly adding: “Rather you than me.” He rather thinks that all this surging, quiet man would do is absorb this remark, which would vanish like something into a deep, still pool.

The Palace servant fancies himself a poet and is, in truth, not a bad one. He mutters images to himself all the way back to his station, itching for ink and paper and wondering if his warning would be stone or leaf or something else.

She hears the door knocked again, runs both fingers through her hair and stares at the wall next to it, opening her mouth to say nothing.

“Madame?” The voice is lower-pitched, carries, somehow, further. Oh no. A pause. Quieter: “Constance?”

“No,” she says, immediately. “No.”

“Constance?”

“I might have known,” she calls, the old bravado lifting her voice, “that he’d send you.”

“He hasn’t.”

“No? Well. Well, fine, then.” She winces. _What was that?_

“Will you let me in?”

“No.”

“Then I’ll wait,” he says, and she hears nothing more. She finds her gaze darting around the room, her fingers clenching in each other. But she does not open the door.

After a while she sits down. A while later she stands up. Utterly unused to any kind of leisure, she realises with a start that she is intensely bored.

_Finally._

Shut up.

She digs out some mending work she’s been putting off and settles to it, as much as she can settle to anything, for the next couple of hours.

After this, she paces.

After this, she tries to read a book.

After this, she throws the book across the room and allows herself a violent spate of weeping. Stupidly, she is feeling guilty, because she only learned to read in order to learn how to do Bonacieux’s stupid accounts and now…

And now…

Look at this fancy, bloody stupid room and fancy, bloody stupid clothes. You imagined yourself someone who had adventures, and you were just another doll in a different costume, playacting for, for other people. Again.

None of it was real. _None of it!_

And the storm of tears carries her off again. She rather fancies she might break something – something that would make a satisfying sound and a terrible mess. She also knows that she won’t, because. Because.

“Damn, fuck, bugger, and blast every God-forsaken, stupid, _fucking_ thing!”

She hears the distinct sound of a throat being cleared. She looks towards the door, cautiously.

“Athos?” Her voice sounds horribly cracked.

“Yes?”

She sniffs deeply. “Still there?”

“Still here.”

“Right.” She washes her hands together. “Right.”

She can’t tell if she hears or imagines the slight huff that is his particular brand of laughter. She finds herself warming in mingled embarrassment and a strange gratitude, and feels, very briefly, less alone.

She still does not open the door.

Two hours later, there is another knock. She draws breath and hears a new voice saying “Madame? I’ve brought your food?” She rather fancies that it’s Nadine.

Opening the door, she finds her hoisting a large tray containing two covered dishes (one large, one small), a jug, and a glass. She goes to take the tray from Nadine, who gives her a dry “please, Madame” look until she backs away, opening the door wider and pointing to a table. At a second thought, she steels herself and looks out into the corridor, to find it empty.

This, of course, is no guarantee that he isn’t there and can’t see her.

Fine.

Nadine turns from the table, bobs, then smirks at Constance when she frowns at this overt subservience. “Madame,” she murmurs before leaving.

Constance closes the door and, almost against her own volition, crosses to the table.

The food turns out to be a hearty form of soup; very fresh, white bread; some butter; and a small goat’s cheese. All nourishment that someone who has been crying off and on for two days and barely eating would find easy to get down. The jug turns out to contain water.

Fine.

Almost vengefully, she tears a little bread, still standing, and dips it into the soup, which smells, she has to admit, wonderful. Almost as soon as it’s past her lips she’s tearing more, dipping, sitting, almost smiling, pouring water.

Another hour passes.

“Athos?”

“Yes?”

“Just checking.”

“Hmm.”

An hour or so later and she’s managed a few pages of her retrieved book. She hears the swift, clinking step of a passing guard only after it’s stopped and the murmuring exchange is nearly concluded. The guard’s steps move on.

She merely gazes at the door, then returns to the battered volume. She finds herself hoping that the heroine will knock her latest swain on the head and run off deeper into the forest, maybe forming a liaison of female bandits. She feels that she is doomed to disappointment and that no shepherdess herein depicted is going to do more than turn a suspiciously deft phrase and resist his blandishments in a manner that will lead to more misunderstandings between her and her other lover.

“I can’t believe that there are three more of these bloody things to go,” she mutters, crossly, and knows that she will, nevertheless, persist, as she did for the last two, because finishing these things is rather like finishing cake. You don’t precisely _need_ to, but…

As the hours pass, the shadows shift across the floor until the room is left still light but no longer directly sunny.

“Goodnight, Constance,” he says, close and quiet, and she hears the slow slide of a man rising to depart.

“Good– er, goodnight, Athos.”

It’s impossible to hear a man nod from the other side of any door, but she fancies she does, all the same.

She wonders if she will sleep tonight. She rather hopes, this time, that she will.


	2. Board

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which opposing positions are taken.

The susurrus of something sliding under her door brings her head out of her hands. It’s some hours since Nadine brought her breakfast and removed the other tray with the smallest expression of approval at how well it had been cleared.

Constance, a long way from being a child, had found these touches curiously comforting where she suspected, on reflection, that, from anyone more talkative, she’d find them condescending in the worst way.

Either way, she’d eaten the breakfast. A browner bread, with a choice of apricot preserve or set honey, another pat of butter, and a jug of fresh milk.

For a confused moment she’d wondered why they were risking bringing her a knife until she’d remembered that she was no-one’s prisoner. Not precisely.

She’d suspected that she may have been reading too many novels lately.

Shortly after she’d finished eating, the knock sounded on the door.

“Go away, Athos,” she’d called, softly, almost smiling.

“No,” came the firm, quiet reply that had had her shaking her head, lips pressed lightly together.

And now this. She crosses the room, tugging her shawl closer, higher. The season has finally turned and autumn is gathering in the Palace and its grounds with a determined hand, clearly meaning to make up for lost time.

She bends to pick up the tightly folded piece of paper and, for a vivid moment, sees herself hurling it into the fire unread. Mouth tucked to one side, crouched heedlessly on her heels, she unfolds it, brow lowering lopsided as she sees what’s inside.

It is a set of black and white squares, sixty-four of them, instantly recognisable to her, painstakingly drawn with a quill which has objected to this treatment a number of times. Each piece is in its starting position except two of them. The artist had clearly started with the best of intentions, before realising that the black squares needed to be implied with a few diagonal strokes so that the black pieces would still be visible. She wonders how long it took him to complete.

The only two pieces which appear to have moved are the white Queen’s pawn and the black King’s knight. They are side-by-side in the middle of the board. She frowns at this briefly, even as her mouth softens, until she realises that he has punctiliously depicted where they would be after two moves each.

She clears her throat. “You know,” she says, “a pawn’s first move can be two squares forward.”

“Indeed,” he replies, low and close, and she pictures him sat against the door, legs stretched out in front of him, head turned to make himself more clearly heard, “but that doesn’t allow for a particularly sophisticated defence if all the pawns act the same way.”

She feels her face soften further into what definitely feels like the start of a smile. “True,” she concedes.

She slides to the floor completely, sets her back to the wood, breathes deeply. After a while, she says: “What are you doing here, Athos?”

“Guarding your door,” he says, very simply. Her eyes close and prick, painful in the wake of all the weeping. There is something like broken glass embedded deep inside them. She realises, abruptly, that she has been doing all the crying she has refused to permit herself for… she thinks… years. Actual years.

God-damn it.

They sit for a while, silent, until she says: “Would you like a game?”

“Yes, please.”

“Hold on. It’ll take me a lot longer than you to stand up.”

“I can wait.”

That you can, she thinks. I’ve never known anyone like you for it.

“Well, that's your profession, I suppose.”

“And yours,” comes back. His voice has not shifted position.

She knows that, even if she could see his face, the intent behind that remark would still remain shuttered and layered to her gaze, allowing her to fall into the gaps between meanings.

It is probably safer, she supposes, pushing herself upright with a brief skitter when it’s clear she’s trodden on the hem at the back of her own gown, to assume all meanings are present when it comes to someone like Athos.

 _How exhausting_.

Well, quite.

As she brushes herself down, checks to see that she’s dressed appropriately enough to let him enter, she catches herself with the recollection that this is a man who’s seen her – and recently – in a much more dishevelled state.

That’s not a helpful thought.

And so, blushing crossly, she opens the door. He is holding his hat in one hand, other resting on the pommel of his sword, lowered face a study in courteous neutrality. It is everything she would have expected from Athos, which is, in itself, a devastating mix of comforting and oddly vexing – that so much should have changed and he’s still so… still, studied, studying. His eyes flick across her in an assessment that, she has no doubt, takes in more than anyone else’s full minute of staring would do, and that’s…

That’s Athos. Quiet, restrained, pale in the shaded corridor; he looks, if you know the reading of it, restless, which is to say: a specific type of stillness. She suspects that his sleep has not been all it could be lately either.

“Come in,” she says, hearing a brittle edge to her voice where she’s clamped down on the urge to hurl herself into an embrace.

He nods, once, “Madame,” and crosses the threshold, and her heart quails a little, because it has nothing of the time-worn, dark and subtle humour of their habitual salutations. She cannot bring herself to answer it in kind, except with a sombre nod of her own.

As she moves to close the door, return to a seemly distance across from him, he opens and then closes his mouth on a number of common platitudes. She is clearly not well, and all she’s been doing is fretting in this room. At least she’s eaten and drunk now. He feels his teeth grind briefly, and looks up to find that she can’t quite meet his eye either. So.

“So,” she says, hands washing together.

He nods. Gestures open-handed towards the table with its habitual board with a slight rise of eyebrow. She nods. They step towards the chairs and he frowns lightly as his hands move automatically to remove his weapons belt. She points towards the chair behind him and, blinking rapidly, he turns neatly on the spot to unhook himself and lay everything on it with an obsessive punctilio, as if seeking to muffle the clatter in this distinctly unmartial place.

She catches herself on the thought that it’s almost a dancer’s move, failing to quash the image of him sitting, with similarly fearful finesse, on that very spot. From his colour as he turns back, he’s struggling with the same memories. She spots the briefest narrowing of his eyes and flare of nostrils. He nods again, the slanted one that means: go on.

Face cold in patches, she gathers her skirts under her and sits.

Black is an awful colour on her, he thinks, sitting, doublet still buttoned, not without recognising the irony of that statement. He finds that he does not want to remove his gloves; there is something terribly cold about this room, and the shawl about her neck and shoulders suggests that he’s not alone in this sensation. He finds himself about to ask which colour she wants to play, and swallows it for fear that the answer has changed.

Her hands hover over the board for a moment, and then she starts to gather the white towards herself, and he echoes on a muted outbreath with the black, the felted shuffle the only sound for the moment. On completion of the reassembly, one of her eyebrows creases downwards, and he, taking a leap, plucks one pawn from each side, juggles them in his lap, and holds his clenched fists out, backs upwards. Her eyes narrow, very nearly on his, then clear, and she reaches out and smartly taps him on the back of his left glove.

He turns it upward, revealing the white pawn. She nods, replaces it, and makes her first move, focus suddenly very intent.

Besides, he thinks, surely any unfair advantage she may have been worried about would be neutralised by her unsettled state of mind.

Ten minutes later he realises his error – Constance determined to distract herself is a ruthless opponent. It’s entirely possible she was going easy on him last time. He tells himself that this is a good sign, for the stability of her mind and the prospect of recovery. He finds himself smiling – a tiny twitch outside the current scope of her vision.

An impasse. He will have to sacrifice either a knight or a fool if he wants to gain any advantage. Or he could temporise for a few moves, let her draw further ahead. He reaches out to… pulls his fingers in like an anemone, then lays them gently on his castle.

“Athos?”

“Yes?”

“Stop humoring me and give me some kind of challenge, will you?”

His head snaps up to see her still intent on the board.

“If you’re smirking, it’ll go hard with you.”

He feels his face struggling to rearrange itself for a moment. “Very well,” he answers, relieved to hear his voice neutral.

“Go on, then.”

“Very well,” he says again, a notch harder. He nearly misses her own, tiny smile, and tucks the sight of it away inside himself as he moves his fool to the sacrificial position.

She lets out a small “Hah,” and frowns happily at the board, hunching her shoulders at it, then, a scant couple of minutes later, deliberately unhunching them. Childhood deportment lessons clout him across the back of his skull at this and he wonders if it was that early for her, or… more likely it was Bonacieux, wanting an upright wife, fit for the high company he aspired to, as if a seamstress, he thinks, a little vengefully, any craftswoman does not have enough to do without trying to sit daintily as she does so. Or maybe it was the ministrations of those chattering imbeciles of the Queen’s court.

He has a flashing image of how it must have been for her since they first met, and his heart eddies, cold, in him.

He makes the next two moves almost without volition, struck with how poor a friend he’s been to her, indeed; submerged all these years into his own misery and despite of womankind while she slowly sank under the weight of strictures he can barely imagine, even as he chafed at the burden of nobility he’d imagined for himself, her brightness all-but dimmed until d’Artagnan lit into her life.

Into their lives.

Of all the fools he’s cursed himself for in the past, he can add these further evidences of selfishness to his charge.

He takes a fortifying breath and refocuses on the game. He’s here now.

He’s here now, and she can barely comprehend her deserving of it while at the same time knowing, _knowing_ , that she is only receiving what she needs from someone who… who is fond of her for own sake, and that is…

God-damn it, the to-and-fro clatter of her own thoughts is so _loud_ sometimes. She frowns herself back into the patterns laying themselves out in front of her. Athos plays with the half-involuntary grace of someone who, like Anne, hmm, like The Queen, was raised to play such games from childhood. It’s an irritation – even without practice, he has the potential to beat her if she doesn’t pay attention to carving the path for the next five… ten…? moves…

Well now, she thinks, knowing him as well as I do, that should actually make it easier. And the lines of his mingled ruthlessness and diffidence spring up. The noble would do this, the tactician _this_.

Nine moves later and she springs the trap he’s somehow failed to see, crushing his careful construction without laying herself open. He looks up on a hissed curse and chagrinned grimace to see her eyes sparkling a little, meeting his fully for the first time. He shakes his head, says: “The game’s not over yet.”

“Well…” she smirks.

He raises his eyebrows.

“You _might_ come back from that,” she concedes.

“I see.”

Two more moves each.

“Is there a name for what you just did?”

“‘Trouncing’?”

His mouth purses briefly and he flicks a look at her. “You know what I mean.”

“Yes, but I… don’t.”

“I see…”

His head bowed back to the board, he hears: “There are… I’m better when it’s not… the book’s a bit rubbish.”

If it’s the one he’s thinking of, he can’t help but agree. “Hmm.”

“It’s like dancing,” she says, and he looks up at that. She is frowning a little. “If I try to memorise the names and the correct titles for everything, my legs get in a tangle. But if I can just follow the beat and the movement around me…” She shrugs.

She’s more like d’Artagnan than he’d originally considered. He looks back at the board again, wonders what it would be like to live free of the drill-voice at the back of one’s skull, the clatter of form and duty, then curses himself again – he’s fallen into the trap of thinking that others don’t have duty or nagging, silent voices, when their lives look different from his.

_What a petulant youth you truly are._

Oh, shut up.

_Only when you stop ignoring me._

“It’s called ‘playing by hand’,” he tells her, absently, hunching into his crossed arms as he studies potential futures.

“I know,” she says, and the warmth that’s seeped into her voice brings his head up. She’s blushing for some reason, and it can only mean… he warms to think that… no, he won’t think about her and the Queen. It isn’t…

Seemly.

Damn.

“Don’t think of a white dog!” he tells Thomas. Thomas gasps, then sniggers. “Don’t think of a white dog doing a poo!” he rejoins. He scowls at his brother, who smirks right back. “Changed your face!” he crows. “Changed your fa-ace!”

God-damn.

“You still have your pauldron on,” she points.

“Well?” he is frowning, eyes wide under his brows. It’s a look she knows too well.

“You don’t take it off with the belt?”

He breathes deep – in through the nose and out through the mouth. “It’s a bit fiddly,” he confesses.

“And makes you look like you’re on duty.”

“I do receive less official attention with it on,” he concedes.

“Except when the Red Guard wants a fight.”

“Except then.” He smiles. She doesn’t.

She fidgets.

“I’m here for _you_ , Constance,” he tells her, but that only seems to make her more uneasy, gaze flickering around the room.

“When do _you_ go back to duty?” he asks, and she sees he’s desperate to deflect, watches him realise the trap he’s dug for himself too late.

“When…”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, that’s all right. My place is at the Queen’s side, after all.” She rings with bitterness.

“I didn’t…”

“Look…”

“I’m sure she misses you,” he says, clearly thinking to soothe, and she watches his equivalent of a wince as the hurt flashes across her.

“My Queen is being very patient with me,” she tells him, with dignity.

“No more than your other lover,” he tells her, softly, as if to temper the shock that runs through her at such words.

“He’s not. He can’t.” Her jaw clenches. “I want you to leave,” she says, loudly.

“Madame,” he says, rising stone-faced. “And the game?”

“Oh. Oh, _bollocks_ ,” she says, formality flung from her.

“Madame?”

“Oooh. I swear… if you _Madame_ me one more time, _de la Fère_ , I, I’ll… _My Lord_ you, and you won’t like it.”

“It would be grossly inaccurate, in any case.” His jaw sounds stiffer than the lightness he’s attempting would imply.

“Ah. Yes, I did hear about that.”

His mouth quirks a tiny degree in one corner.

“And you think that’ll make a difference, do you?” She feels as though she’s poking him with a knitting needle.

He raises one eyebrow in lieu of “Madame?” but she sees his jaw clench properly, feels a mean pleasure in it.

“Any more than dressing me up as a real lady makes any difference to…”

“Oh, be quiet,” he says, low and finally passionate. “You think I want to stand here and watch you slash at yourself?”

“And you besides?”

He brushes that away with a swipe of his left hand. “No matter what you wear, you’re worth a score of those simpering ninnies out there,” pointing with his right, “and you know it.”

“ _They_ don’t,” she retorts.

“They _do_ ,” he returns. “They do and it galls them.” He shakes his head. “You have the favour of the highest in the land, and they can’t comprehend your strength. Do you know what I wish for you, Constance?”

“What’s that?” She can feel her temper rising properly now, hot and certain.

“Two things.” His lips are flattened and his nostrils flaring, ever so slightly. He raises one gloved finger. “I wish you better company – those who see your strength and accept and cherish it.” He raises another tight beside it. “And I wish you to see yourself clearly for the woman that you are and that you can be.”

She finds herself staring at his hand, at the way the extended digits are lightly curved, the others tucked into his palm. A small frown creases him, he looks across, reddens, curses under his breath, and drops his hand to his side.

“If I can be of no further service to you today,” he says, visibly trying to winch his patience back to the fore, “I will bid you farewell.”

“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Athos,” she snaps, “sit down. Unless,” she adds, softer, brow rising in sudden guilt, “you do have other duties that…”

“No,” he says, sinking back into his seat. “Not. No, not for the moment.”

“Well then,” she says. “I think it’s your move.”

He inclines his head briefly, slightly.

“Really?” she asks, after he makes it. His sigh reflects, checking his face swiftly, a wry kind of exasperation.

Clearly well aware of her fleet scrutiny, he manages: “I’ve not had the benefit of your more recent practice, M– much as it pains me.”

She gulps back the laughter that spurts in her at his rapid correction, but can’t suppress her grin. It pulls, unpleasantly, and she puts her hand to her mouth, expression dropping like a stone.

He sees her hand rise, looks up, watches her probe gently with a moue of what looks like a species of distaste. Her lower lip is still raw from the clout that that – Athos has rarely had such little trouble thinking ill of the dead – pissant suckarse gave her. Steel closes around the thought.

“I can help with that,” he tells her, mildly.

She looks up, startled, hand dropping away. “With…? Oh.” Her expression twists into something unpleasant. “And how do you propose to soothe this…?” with a curt gesture to the injury.

Maintaining his neutral expression with difficulty, having worked out what she thinks he’s suggesting, he says, levelly: “By helping you ensure that it never happens again.”

“He’s dead,” she says, flat and raw. “I don’t think he’s in any position to…”

“That no man can or dares lay his hand on you like that again…”

“That might have saved me a bruise or two,” she concedes, hand rising reflexively to her right cheekbone, and he clenches his jaw on the demand to know more. Futile – there’s no-one from whom he can demand satisfaction for this.

She sees this, or some of it, and resolves never to tell him of Rochefort’s backhand blow in the laundry. She doesn’t think he could withstand the kind of trouble that would come from seeking recompense.

And maybe one day, she thinks, I’ll have a chance to land one of my own on the snivelling prick, and take it with impunity. She finds the thought cheering, and thinks something of this bloodthirsty satisfaction must reflect in her expression as his own clears.

“When would you like to start…?” they say, almost in unison, and she feels a proper smile blossom on her.

Calm as a millpond, he says: “How about now?”


	3. Starting Block

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which new positions are discussed and demonstrated.

She blinks rapidly, stands on an in-breath. He stands with her. _Nervous_ doesn’t quite cover what she feels, but neither does _excited_. She pushes a smile at Athos, smoothes her dress. “So. What do we do?”

He lifts a small smile of his eyes to her, says: “We’ll need to clear some space.”

“Oh. Oh, of course. Here?”

He shrugs. He’s right – where else would they go? Between them, they push and lift a space free of furniture, the tables and chairs tucked as close to the walls as possible. The place looks oddly bare, but she also feels her mind clearer than it has been in days. Something to do with the space and the light. Something to do with the fact that she was able to take her share of moving the larger chair. Something to do with… with…

“Now what?”

“We start with the basics,” he tells her. “When you… when you started sewing. What did you learn first?”

She is sitting, legs swinging, peering at her mother who says “I wouldn’t give you two deniers for that. Shoddy. Look.”

“What’s sho-ddy?”

“Look, child – the thread’s very pretty but the cloth’s been overworked – it’ll not hold together. Cheap, old fabric covered in gaude, is what it is.”

“Gaude?”

“Glittery. Rubbishy. Look…” and she pulls the two parts of the cloth gently and Constance watches the holes gape and spread beneath the broad, metallic threads.

“I can’t do anything with this.”

“What if, um, you put a,” her plump little hand strokes the air above the shoddy seam, “a thing on it?”

“Hmm?”

“A _thing_ …” She does not have the word for “band” or “patch” yet.

She looks up at Athos. “No matter how good your sewing, it’s the cloth that makes the garment.”

“Right.”

“So?”

“I was thinking more about starting with simple techniques, but yes – that’ll do. If you don’t have the underlying principles in place, you can’t learn anything more elaborate.”

“You’re not going to be teaching me how to throw a man over my shoulder today. I get it.”

He smiles, brief and sweet and sidelong. “Quite.”

“I’ll be learning how to thread a needle and tie a knot.”

“Yes.”

“Well, go on, then.”

“We’ll start with defensive moves.”

“Go on.”

He looks at her, levelly. “It’ll probably go quicker if you stop urging me on.”

“I’ve heard that before,” she retorts before she can grab the words back, but, to her relief, he just rolls his eyes above a small twist of lip and she thinks: _he’d do that if Aramis or Porthos had just said that_ , and she smirks back at him, grateful.

He raises his arms slantwise in front of him, backs of his fists facing her. She considers tapping one to reveal the pawn, but ducks that bubbling thought. They cock their heads at each other. “Copy me,” he says, patiently.

“Oh.”

“And lose the shawl.”

“Ah.”

And so they start. He shows her stance, which is similar to how d’Artagnan showed her how to stand with a sword or pistol, a broad base to be steady from. On remembering that she has that grounding, he tells her that parrying with her arms and hands is all very well, but that dodging is paramount. He makes her lower her arms and takes her through a slow set of forms as bubble-slow fists approach her, having her practise the best ways to move away from a straight-arm punch to the face, a right hook, a left hook, an uppercut. Over and over, slowly increasing in speed, never quite giving her time to be bored.

When the door is knocked, Constance is puffing, blowing loosened hair from her face with something approaching a smile. She goes still. “Yes?”

“Lunch, Madame?”

“Oh. Er. Oh, yes, please.”

Athos frowns at her with a tilt of his head. She considers, quickly, shoos him into the bedroom. He shuts its door quietly and she smoothes her hair back and opens the outer door.

Nadine steps in, stares a little, blinking at the rearranged furniture as she looks for the previous tray, spots it, swaps, and, with the tiniest of side-eye glances for Constance herself, sways neatly out of the room with the breakfast leftovers.

Hmm.

“Want some lunch?” she asks Athos, who has stepped out on her quiet whistle.

He nods. Soldiers, she thinks: always hungry.

They divide the food between them and sit for a while after it’s finished, Athos starting to talk, almost absently, about his early lessons, the endless drills on the decorum of fencing, the things he absorbed without learning. He talks of what he uses now, what the difference is. She’s heard some of this before, but stiffer, prouder, angrier. Now he lets out a reminiscent huff for the first time he saw Porthos slam someone’s nose into his upswinging knee, and she reads the strange wonder he must have felt then, remembers the first time she saw him fight, his affront at their lack of honour more than any injury sustained, stays silent save for the occasional hum and affirmation, enjoying the novelty of this many words spilling from him.

He tails off, sits silent for a moment, fishes out his pocket watch, says: “Shall we?”

She gestures towards the space with an open hand. “Let’s.”

“Of course,” he says, almost musingly, “it’s passing unlikely anyone will give you a chance to square off nicely, but we’ll deal with that…” he frowns, “later. Anyway.”

“Parrying?”

“Parrying. Blocking.”

“Athos?”

“Yes?”

“Never mind.” She raises her arms again.

He frowns, steps forward. “May I?” reaching for her arms.

“Of course.”

“Hmm.” He rearranges her, left closer to her face. “Protect your nose,” he says, shortly.

He steps back smartly, huffs a swift, deep breath, and raises his own arms.

Oh.

“We’ll start slowly,” he says, face shut down again, and starts to call the blows, this time telling her how she must deflect, but that’s, somehow, harder than the ducking was and she’s frowning into this.

“ _Turn_ it away,” he says, for what is possibly the thirteenth time, though you wouldn’t know it from his voice.

“I _know_ ,” she says, thoroughly irritated with herself now.

He comes to stand next to her, flicks a quick look her way, shows her slowly with his own arms, flicks another look at her, sighs briefly, says: “Look, just relax for the moment.”

He moves away and they just stare not-quite at each other for a short spell.

“Right,” he says, briskly. “Come at me.”

“What?”

“You attack me and I’ll show you how to deflect.”

“But…”

“Constance, you won’t hurt me.”

That’s not quite what she means, but she squares off anyway, steps in smartly and aims a straight-armed punch at him.

He knocks it down. “Again. Watch your feet.” He shakes his head. “Not literally.”

That earns him a swift, hard grin. She tries again. He knocks it away. “Again,” he calls. “Faster this time.”

This time he traps her arm and steps in closer. They stare, breathing hard and he lets her go hurriedly. They step back again.

“How, er. How do I know where you’re coming in?”

“Experience?”

“Yes, but where am I watching?”

“I’m guessing the answer is not: my arm.”

“Correct.”

“Eyes?”

“Sometimes.”

“Don’t know.”

“I did tell you,” and his tone is only slightly reproachful, the mildest sting.

Prickled, she casts her mind back, sees him tapping himself earlier in the dodging instruction. “Chest.”

“Yes.”

“You’re watching my chest.” Her voice dry as dust.

“Y– er, yes.”

She arches an eyebrow just to see him look irritated for a moment. “Again?”

“Again.”

This time she comes in faster, whole body behind it, and he steps away and around in a half-circle, grabbing her wrist as she passes him under her own momentum.

“Damn.”

He nods. He hasn’t let go. “You can break out of this. Turn your arm in the direction of my thumb.”

“But…”

“Trust me.”

She does. She does it, and his grip falls away.

“Good. Again.”

Each time his hand seizes her wrist, her heart kicks up a notch and cold floods her, but she turns, and turns, and turns, and each time she is free.

Then he takes her wrist, she sees his chest shift and she brings her left arm up hard, twists down with her right and steps back as his slow blow glances away from her forearm.

“Good,” he says.

“It’s better if I don’t–”

“– think too much,” he finishes. He nods. “You’re doing very well.”

She smiles. It’s small, but it reaches her eyes, and it strikes her that she is smiling much as he does, and then it strikes her why he may have learned this repertoire of miniscule expressions, likewise feeling his mouth constrained, and she blushes, turning away a little as she does so, and hopes he sees it merely as embarrassed pleasure.

“Thank you,” she says, schooling herself, turns to look him full in the eyes.

His smile creeps broader, proud of her, she thinks. And for a moment that pride chimes all brass and sunlight in her, and later she will feel it stronger and louder, but for now it sinks into the muffling dark that inhabits her.

“Take a break,” he tells her. “Drink some water.”

“I’m warm now, finally,” she tells him, and he lifts a grin at her back as she goes to pour the water, starts to undo his doublet in acknowledgement.

“Will you take your gloves off?” she asks, turning to see him.

“Maybe,” he says. He is thinking, as he does so, of the best lessons he can leave her with for today, remembering how he saw her bedroom dressing table while waiting for the servant to leave. The _other_ servant, he reminds himself. Hmm. Anyway, he’d been thinking in terms of conflict, had seen her combs, brushes, pins, powder puffs; catalogued them all as potential weapons. He had resolutely kept his gaze away from the bed. Don’t think of a white dog, or d’Artagnan writhing, mmh, just there, no, or his first taste of Constance. God- _damn_ it, man. Her voice ringing in shocked delight. No. The delicious heat of him. _No_.

His soles had whispered across the floor, drawing his arm in step-lunge drills, filling his head with the dry voice of Monsieur Dupuis, his habitual sniff, the creak of his boots, actually just his left boot, where rumour held it that he hid a terrible wound bound in, variously, wood, leather, or steel, depending on who was telling the tale. The tap of the foot of his cane that preceded “Again,” never loud, never angry, just terribly implacable. “Again,” and en guarde, extension, retreat, esquive, flèche, turn, lunge, raddoppio. “Sloppy.” Tap tap. En guarde, extension, retreat, esquive, flèche, turn, lunge, raddoppio, muscles burning, sweat on the grip. “Again.” And she’d whistled him away.

“Improvisation,” he tells her now, “is key. You can drill perfectly for twenty years, but what will make the difference between walking away and being carried away is how you respond to the shifts in your environment outside the practice hall.” He pauses.

“Like smashing a man’s nose with your knee.”

He smiles despite himself. “Like that.”

“When do I learn that?”

“We’ll have to get Porthos in for the advanced techniques – mêlée is his speciality.”

“Because he’s big and strong.”

“Hmm,” he concedes. “Also: there’s nothing he won’t use to his advantage. Really,” he says, slowing, eyes drifting, “it should be him teaching you this.”

“Well,” she says, briskly, “since you’re here now, you might as well do a sub-standard job.”

He slants an acknowledgement of her wit her way, then says: “Right, defend yourself,” and swings at her – a looping backhand, which she ducks back from, not a little affronted. He reaches out his other hand while her attention is taken by the follow-through of the first, and gives a quick shove to her upper chest.

“Hey!”

He presses on, crowding her backwards. She risks a quick look over her shoulder, side-steps a chair, looks back at him as, mouth a grim line, he takes her upper arm in a firm grip. _Not fair_ , she thinks: _we never covered that!_

Oh, right.

Then her back hits the wall and his other hand is planted there, braced next to her head. His fingers are digging into her flesh. Cold panic is rising in her, crowding out confidence and knowledge. She screws herself up and presses both fists to his chest, pushes. He barely budges.

“Think, Constance,” he hisses, and she knows he’s only playing a role, but she’s starting to feel genuinely frightened.

“Please,” she says, and it sounds so weak to her ears.

And he immediately steps back, reassumes his “teaching mode” demeanour, to her frank astonishment.

“Now, how do you think you could get out of that?”

“I–I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

“But–”

“But what, Constance?”

“I’m… You’re stronger than me.”

“So? I’m stronger than Aramis, and he could still get free.”

“Is that so?” She’s genuinely curious.

“Yes,” he’s off-hand. “He’s objectively less strong, but still…”

“Weapons. He always has a weapon. I don’t…”

“Yes, you do.”

“What?”

“What’s within reach?”

She casts around. “Er.”

“Pockets?”

“Oh. Oh, hah.”

“Jewellery, hairpins…”

“Shoes?”

“Yes.”

She thinks. “Can we try again?”

“Of course.” And immediately he’s crowding her again, face a mask of angry scorn, and she can’t think of that, just can’t. She kicks out, scrapes her heel down the side of his calf.

“Good,” he says, “but I’m wearing riding boots. What else?”

He ducks back from the hooked fingers she thrusts at his eyes, laughs when she slips her hand into her pocket and comes up empty, until he feels the scratch of the needle against his cheek.

“Very good,” he says, stepping back, face mild again, shucking his doublet and throwing it to one side. “In real life, aim either higher than that or much lower, and go in harder. Again?”

She nods.

This time he catches her hand and presses it to the wall. And this time her knee comes up. He barely avoids it, for all she’s moving slowly – somewhere between a warning pace and hampered by her skirts, he supposes.

“Good. Again?”

“Yes.” The old, fierce light is more apparent in her eyes.

And this time he moves even faster, and her hand is pinned to the wall, his body crowding in too close for her knee to make play and his heat and breath wash over her. She wants. She. How to. Damn.

Oh damn.

“Constance,” he says, carefully.

“Yes, Athos?”

“I’m going to step away now.”

Oh, but what if I don’t want you to? “Right, right.”

When she risks a peek at him, his demeanour is calm, face lowered a little, but his colour somewhat high, and his eyes don't quite meet hers.

“I suppose,” she says, aiming for jocular, “I can’t rely – in real life – on…” and then finds she can’t find the words to continue.

He nods, eyes still downwards. “Well, quite.” As she watches, a small smile quirks his lips and is swallowed. She finds she can relax herself now, gently push the buzzing down from her face and chest. She takes a deeper breath, hears it echoed a few feet away.

He looks up, and she wonders if it’s at that sound, but can read nothing but pleasant politeness on his face as he says, with a quick raise of eyebrows: “Ready for another?”

“Mmmh,” she nods, fairly sure she isn’t, but that’s almost the point anyway, so…

“Step forward,” he beckons, and she leaves the wall as he backs a couple of steps with her. “Let’s see what you can do this time.”

He comes in fast, but she’s been thinking, tucks her arms in close so he can’t grab her wrist then, as he pushes her towards the wall, she breaks them from the circle of his arms, catching his chest and upper arm with her right elbow on the way past, fighting the panic of his breath harsh in her ear, fighting the warmth that reflects his, coiling its strength into her gut. He reaches the free hand up to grab her right wrist as they hit the wall and she turns and, before either of them know what’s happening, she’s seized it and sunk her teeth into his arm.

He freezes, and hunches forward as if gut-struck, breathing out hard, a grunt gathering at the back of his throat. Her fingers tighten once on him, then let go.

Wide-eyed, she looks up at him, trying to read his expression. “Are you all right?”

“Mmh?” He seems to recollect himself and backs off, head shaking as if to clear it.

She repeats the question, sees his face come up, eyes rolling like… like a spooked animal. He takes a steadying breath. “Yes.” Nostrils flaring, lips flattened.

“You look–”

“It’s nothing.” She can see his jaw clenching, the way he’s very pale, but with hectic colour spreading across his cheekbones. He asks, carefully, gaze sidelong and somewhere near her shoulder: “Why did you do that?”

Mildly affronted, oddly guilty, she blurts: “You said try anything!”

“Right… Right.” He’s got his right hand cupped over his left forearm, thumb moving in short bursts against his sleeve.

“Did I hurt you?”

He cocks a sarcastic look her way, unclasps his arm then, as she involuntarily starts forward, hands reaching to it, he backs another step, says: “It’s not bleeding.”

Which is no kind of answer. She stands, mouth a wry slant, hands on her hips.

“Constance,” he says, patient, slow: “sparring brings pain with it. That’s how we learn.”

Astonished all over again, she frowns at him, head on one side. Recovering, she says: “Then I suppose I’ve got off lightly.”

“This time,” he says, with a flash of that dark, dry humour she loves so much, and feels her mouth rise to meet it, eyes crinkling.

She hardens her expression deliberately, comically, says, cocky as any raw recruit: “That sounds like a challenge.”

“Just so,” he agrees, with a grave nod. His eyes slide, and he fishes his pocket watch out. “However, it will have to wait until another time.”

“Duty calls?”

He gives another slow, slanted, expressionless nod that might mean anything, side-steps to pick up his doublet, turns on the balls of his feet to search out the chair on which his belt and hat rest. He marches swiftly across the now very empty-looking space to retrieve them.

He turns back to her, hands busy at his waist, face bent to the task, starts: “When–”

“Tomorrow?” she cuts in, swiftly. “Er.” She falters, feeling the new confidence drain out of her a little. “That is, if…”

He takes a fastened half-step forward, turns a strangely soft mien and voice on her. “Tomorrow you will ache. A great deal, I suspect.”

She frowns. He’s barely laid a hand on her, except in the last few passes, and even then with the force restrained, she’s sure. “But–”

“You have been using your body strenuously, in ways new to you. You must stretch – tonight and tomorrow morning.” He shows her slow rolls of his shoulders, pulls of the arms, and twists of torso. Mirroring them, she remembers, now, how she’d ached in unusual places after d’Artagnan had first coached her in weapons, especially the sword. He never showed her any stretches, though. On mentioning this, Athos sighs. “D’Artagnan is young,” he tells her, “and very flexible.” His eyes slide again. She feels her flush mount at what he may be seeing. He clears his throat, looks briefly cross. “And thus it falls to an older man to teach you the tricks that come with age and–” he falters.

“– and experience,” she finishes. And they both stand there, staring in furious concentration over each other’s shoulders.

Swallowing hard, looking around, he sweeps an open palm to indicate the state of the room. “Should we–?”

She shakes her head rapidly. “No, leave it. We’ll continue this tomorrow.”

“But–”

“I can deal with a little stiffness, if you can.” Damn it, woman!

“Ah, are you–?”

“I’m sure. _Please_ , Athos,” she adds, abruptly passionate, and he nods, in a species of resignation.

“Very well.” He puts his hat on, tugs it down in that familiar gesture, and nods to her. She feels her heart flutter gladly for a moment as he says, precisely when she would have predicted: “Madame.”

“Monsieur,” she nods back, sees her small smile reflected as their eyes meet briefly, and then he’s gone on a murmur of boot heels.

She sits herself down, holding one palm over her forehead. “Well, you’ve done it now, Constance.”

 _Good_.

Oh, hush.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’m no expert in this kind of thing, let alone the seventeenth century equivalent, so do feel free to let me know how much of this is patently ridiculous in a way that can’t be covered by the specific circumstances surrounding this story, and I’ll do my best to accede. ☺
> 
> Anyone wishing to follow Athos home after this can do so off-piste to a rather more explicit one-off [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15779994)


	4. Reserve

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a continuation and a consolidation.

This time, when the door is knocked after breakfast, she walks over immediately and asks: “Athos?”

“Yes.”

She nods silently. “Come in.”

She backs from the door as he slowly opens it. His face and demeanour are… quiet, she thinks. Not withdrawn, but empty like… the sky after a storm.

Or maybe it’s the weather making her think in these terms.

“Still wet out?”

He flicks his eyebrows, and she sees that there is still plenty of sound in him. For a roaring moment she sees him fling his hat from him, take a long stride forward and–

No.

She points him at the fire, and he smiles, grateful, hangs hat, scarf, and cloak up on the hooks for the purpose, followed by his weapons belt and doublet.

He strips his gloves and lays them on the hearth, moves his hand to his wrist as if to fold up his sleeves, then tugs the cuffs down, shakes his arms out, rolls his shoulders, turns to look at her.

“How goes it with you, Madame?”

“Well, thank you,” she responds, feeling something approaching a real smile. “You?”

“Very well.” And he seems to mean it. “And truthfully? How stiff are you?”

“Hah! _So_ stiff.” He ducks his head with a hint of smile. “Athos, how do you bear it?”

“It gets better. You adapt. Do it every day for a fortnight and you’ll stop noticing anything.”

“ _Really?!_ ”

“Well, approximately.” He imagines, for a moment, a Constance in leathers; all… _some_ of her softness redefined to harder lines. He remembers that she has killed men when she needed to. He thinks that he wouldn’t know whether to mourn or celebrate such a transition, and he suspects a little of both, but more the latter, on the whole.

“Did I lose you?” There is a quiver in her voice almost of amusement, as though she is forgetting to be sequestered. He hopes so.

“Never,” he answers, absently, but hears what he’s said, hears her gasp.

“Well,” she says, crisply enough, “if I’m stuck with you, we’d best get on, hadn’t we?”

He has her move slowly, showing him what is stiff, what hurts, and how, the limits of her movements. He’s silently relieved that she shows nothing more than more than what he would have expected in a new recruit. He shows her how to shake out the stiffness, stretch into it, tells her that today will be light, a consolidation of yesterday, but tomorrow he will expect more. Again, the nearly-smile, the impression of gladness, and he doesn’t press for it, just gives it space in which to be.

Today he has her dodging again to start, partly because it’s an easy win for her. He then has her drill her own punches, calling a short series of forms, and it’s simple to stand to one side, correct her posture, give her praise.

His touch is light, his voice easy. She finds herself enjoying even the ache of yesterday, because it shows her something she’s done, somewhere she’s been. He smells of rain and leather, and she thinks this might be a fresh shirt.

“Again?”

“Again. This time to me.” He holds up a palm, has her strike it, over and again, stopping her when it becomes ragged, telling her that fewer of good form is better than learning bad movements, the sloppy posture of fatigue. And so he has her drink water and talks through a number of hypothetical scenarios – how would she escape; how would she turn the scenario to her advantage.

“I think, at first,” he says, then takes a thoughtful swallow of his own drink, “you must think in terms of escape – incapacitation and escape, if necessary, but winning…”

“Winning is getting to walk away. Like you said.”

His eyebrows rise. “Yes,” he says, sounding both surprised and pleased. “I did say that.” And he smiles, and she can’t help but smile back.

“Have you done this before?” she asks, and she wonders that she’s not thought to before now.

“Not quite. Not… not from the beginning,” he says, sounding either cautious or reluctant, she’s not sure. “And they tend to come to me for sword instruction, not this.” His eyes go distant, and then his lips twitch. “Were Fabron here – ah, our swordmaster, that is – he’s have me coach you to hone your muscles in particular ways first, with no reference to what they’re for. Porthos…” he closes his eyes briefly and shakes his head. “Porthos has no time for it. Arguably he needs it less than others might. In fact…” and he tells her of a competition between Porthos and Fabron that he’d found himself adjudicating. “… utterly pointless. But he won.”

“Of course. How much?”

“Hmm?”

“The wager.”

“Ah. A few livres, I think.” He blinks, looks around, puts his empty goblet down. “Shall we go again?”

Suddenly nervous for no reason, she nods, takes another swallow of water, sets down the cup and says: “What next?”

“Blocking and parrying again, I think.” She groans, head dropping back for effect. “I know. But it’s important.”

“I know.”

“All right, then.”

Ten marginally successful minutes in, there’s a knock at the door. Athos fishes his watch out, throws a puzzled look her way. He steps back softly, tilts his head towards the bedroom with a question of brows. Her mouth screws to one side. _Maybe_.

There’s a muttering outside. She opens her mouth to call out and Athos, cursing silently, notices his apparel at the fireplace. More quietly than she would have believed possible, had she not seen him do this before, he moves to gather them, preparatory to sequestering himself. Before either of them can make a move, the door is knocked again, louder, faster, longer.

Her heart sinks. Oh no.

“Constance?”

“Monsieur…”

“It’s fine. It’s fine, just. Just leave, okay?”

She looks over to Athos, who is just opening his eyes. He gazes back, as blank-faced as she’s ever seen him, and shrugs into his doublet, begins to fasten it.

“Constance!” Their faces turn in unison to the door.

“Go _away_ , d’Artagnan!”

He looks over at her, sees her face begin to close again. Damn.

“Look, just let me see you.”

“No!”

“It’s…” a muffled thump, followed by another. They can picture the side of his fist coming to rest against the door, next to his forehead.

“Please. Please, just leave me alone.”

“No!”

“ _Please_ , d’Artagnan!”

And then she looks at him, rather as he suspected she would, an open plea on her face.

_This is a terrible idea._

_Please?_

He closes his eyes again for a long breath, opens them, gazes at her for a moment, then nods, slightly.

 _Thank you_.

He finishes fastening his doublet and opens the door.

“I see,” says d’Artagnan. He has never heard his voice so bitter. “I see.” He half turns away, stares at the corridor wall.

He stands, back to the closed door, face and body schooled: eyes slightly hooded, back straight, hands loose at his side. He is trying to flush away the image of the open hope on d’Artagnan’s face and the way it died. After a while, d’Artagnan blinks and asks the floor: “What…?”

“Constance and I are old friends. And, besides, it took me a day of waiting to even get to see her.”

D’Artagnan’s brow creases, lopsided, tilts his head back towards him a little. “You waited.”

“I waited.” And arranged food.

“Ah.” His mouth creases on a slant. “That would be the difference.”

“That and…”

“And what.”

He gestures, a little helpless lift of the hand. “I don’t make her feel guilty.”

D’Artagnan chews that. “‘Old friends’.”

“Yes.”

“Somehow I’d forgotten that.”

He shrugs. “It doesn’t really come up.”

“I suppose not.”

They stand in silence. The rain strikes grey dots and twists into the pale wall, and he thinks about how the light must be lying, wonders if the weather is lifting a little, for that pattern to be so clear.

D’Artagnan finally untwists himself to face Athos properly. He take a deep breath. “How is it with her?”

“Good and bad,” he says. “Sometimes it’s like watching someone punch themselves.” His face twists a little on the words.

“I suppose you’ve been playing chess?”

“A little. She’s…” his eyebrows crease up in the middle. “I don’t think I give her enough of a challenge, if I’m quite honest.”

D’Artagnan twitches a shred of smile at this. “And you’ve spoken?”

“Of games. Of tactics and strategies.” He holds his gaze. D’Artagnan’s slides; his fist works. “Give it time,” he tells him, gently.

“Hah.” His jaw bunches, briefly. “You know – I never thought I’d feel jealous of… of _you_.”

“You have no need.”

“Ath…”

“D’Artagnan, I swear on my life: at this moment, Constance is no more than a friend in pain to me. And no less than that. She has my utmost respect.” His lower left arm throbs for a moment and he steadfastly ignores it.

“And me?”

“Hmm?”

“Do I have your respect, Athos?”

“Of course.”

He takes a step forward. “And any more than that?”

He feels his breath and pulse quicken, thrumming in his throat. “Whatever you need of me, whatever I can give you, it is yours. As it has been all this time.”

“Always?”

“Always.”

D’Artagnan’s chest heaves once, sharply. “I. I need to go.”

“Of course.”

“I’ll see you…?”

“Later. I’ll be back at the barracks soon. We’ll talk.”

“Good. That’s. That’s good.” He turns.

“D’Artagnan, I…”

He smiles – a small, half-hitch of the mouth, eyes low. “I know.” And with that, he walks away, slow but steady.

Athos watches him go, counts slowly to ten, turns, and softly re-enters her quarters.

“So,” she says, as he stands and stares at her feet, back to the closed door. “Blocking and parrying?”

He lifts his mouth to a flattened moue in acknowledgement of all her meanings, says, heavily: “Yes.”

They continue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Want to know how the conversation between Athos and d’Artagnan continued? Head off-piste for an explicit interlude [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16033151)


	5. Fine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a consolidation of what has been learned.

“I will be returning to the Queen’s side,” she tells him. “It’s time.”

“Ah.”

“Come in, though. Please.”

“Thank you.”

“And I. I wanted to thank you,” she says, and he sees she has her armour on, and wants to curse d’Artagnan all over again for his monstrous lack of tact. _At her husband’s graveside; dear God._

In her turn, she looks him over. “Forgive me,” she says, “you. You’re wrung out. Are you all right?”

“Nothing,” he says. “A late night.”

“I take it you weren’t just reading.”

“Wrestling, rather.”

“Ah.”

A pause.

“If I could,” she says, as he says: “Well, if –”

They look at each other carefully.

“After you,” he gestures.

She nods. “I was wondering…”

“Yes?”

“Since you’re here. One last session?”

“Won’t you –”

“A couple of hours won’t hurt.” She looks determined.

He nods. “Very well.” He moves to the fireplace, hangs his still-damp outer clothing, and turns to face her, hands busy on the buckle of his weapons belt. “A consolidation for today, then.” He lays it down precisely, a couple of paces from the hearthstone.

“Very good.” She removes her shawl. He thinks, for a moment, that it looks like a stola, wonders that notions of respectability haven’t moved on from Roman times, shakes his head. No time to be wool-gathering.

“Defend yourself,” he says, and heads towards her, accelerating.

She ducks back from his first strike and knocks aside his second. He sees on her face the kind of focus he associates with her playing chess, and her eyes rake his chest and face constantly.

“You will never be as strong as me,” he tells her, “but you could very well be faster.” She jinks. “Good.”

“How do I learn?”

“By practising.”

She ducks, aims a blow for his midriff which he skips back from. “How?”

“If you won’t come to us for more lessons, then drill here as we’ve rehearsed. It’s better than nothing.”

“Who said I won’t?”

“Will you have time?”

“I’ll,” she backs fast, breath coming harder, fingers turning back her hair from her face, eyes alight but steady, “I’ll _make_ time.”

“Good. En garde,” and he heads her way again, watches her telegraph a punch to his chin and then laughs with honest delight when she catches him a soft blow to his chest instead. “Excellent!”

Light-hearted enough, he can nevertheless feel his energy ebbing faster than he’d like – bleeding through his need to keep his movements a little slower, his blows a great deal lighter than if he was sparring with his brothers. And every so often d’Artagnan’s wretched face, soft and open with hurt, flashes into his head. And Treville, his whole body a wince, finally looking his age, bound and stiff with pain and guilt. And hard on that arrives, inevitably, Porthos’s errand to meet with his father, the strong feeling that only disaster can come from it.

He has to be ready. Ready for whomever may need him; before they know it, if necessary.

She is enjoying this, she realises. The burn in her muscles is a distant thing and just an edge to the sensations of movement and strength, reminding her that, here and now, this is real.

He advances fast and she hoicks her dress to move faster.

“Forget your bloody skirts, woman!” he roars. “You need your hands!”

“Nope!” And she kicks a footstool into his path.

“I see,” he says, losing momentum to knock it to one side. “All right. I see the _use anything_ lesson has stuck.”

“Come on!” and her blood feels hot and bright. Soon, outside, she’ll be Poor Madame Bonacieux. Soon enough Queen’s Confidante. Soon enough she’ll be slow and pale and proper, but right now. Right _now_ …

He closes on her, and matches her dodge for dodge until he’s got her backed into a corner, both of them breathing hard, though he recovers his wind faster as they slow together. “You’re out of condition, Madame,” he says.

“And how do you propose I counter that?” she returns, breathless, eyes everywhere for an escape. She starts to think she’s maybe left it too late and she’s going to have to bite him again, if he’ll allow it this time.

“Get out more, walk faster, start riding.”

“Between sewing, attending on the Queen, her son, and her correspondence?”

“Jump up and down in your quarters in the morning. Run up and down the corridors at night if you have to.” And now she can feel his breath on her neck, his heat washing over her. She has to focus this time. Not let warmer thoughts of him and…

D’Artagnan. And her rage gathers, her indignation and all her unspilled words as he shoved her away with that awful phrase, stalking off all moral indignation and self-centred righteousness. Bastard. Utter bastard.

Close now, very close, and no needles in this dress pocket. Damn it.

“Well? What are you going to do about it?”

Ooh, the cocky prick. The supercilious, snobbish git. She’ll show him.

And she sees three options in front of her, clear as a gaming board. His next move will determine which she uses. Surprise is the key. She knows this now.

“Well…” she murmurs, brows up in the middle as if unsure of herself.

And he cocks his head, all sarcasm and self-possession.

Her hand shoots out and grabs his hair, tugs. She watches his face open in astonishment, uses the moment to shift her fingers deeper, closer to the back of his head, grip hard and really _pull_.

Something like shock rings through him from the back of his skull, washing cold through him, weakening every muscle along the way, followed by a wave of ungovernable warmth. His joints give and he bows back and sideways with her hand, unable to resist.

“Ahh!”

Her face is all astonishment for a moment, then it steels and she pulls harder. “On your knees!”

He crashes, hard, panting, feeling his face flooding with heat, level with her skirts.

Oh God, no, don’t think of that.

Her fist tightens once in his hair and then she lets go, stepping around him. He stays where he is, trying to master his breathing, his heat, his –

Oh fuck, _really?!_

“Athos?”

“Yes?” he manages, hears a quiver in his voice that simultaneously shames and exalts him.

“What just happened?”

“Er.”

Without warning, fingers run up his scalp from the nape of his neck and tighten in his hair again.

“ _Mmmh!_ ” He is governed and undone.

“Oh, dear God,” he thinks he hears her murmur through the rush of blood in his ears. His thoughts are eddying, formless, insubstantial and he finds… he finds it so _peaceful_.

He can hear her breath stuttering a little behind him, wants to turn his head, can’t, mustn’t.

She lets go again, orders: “Stay there,” and he feels so impossibly… _grateful_.

She finds she is itching to say something like “You’ll stay there until you’re sorry,” but that’s not quite right. A small bubble of hysteria wells up in her and she pushes it down. She backs off physically, turns and paces up and down the cleared space in the middle of the room, arms wrapped around herself. She’s feeling an incredible sense of responsibility, because what do you say to someone like Athos to put him back together having cracked him open like this?

He clears his throat. She spins towards him. “Constance?”

“Yes?” She is relieved – _for both our sakes_ – to hear that her voice is steady.

“May I speak?” His voice is quiet, very respectful.

She feels her eyebrows climb, but says: “You may,” firmly.

“Thank you.” There is a pause, and she sees his shoulders rise and fall, his chest swelling with first one great breath and then another. “I should like to get up.”

Her mouth twists. “You’re free to do as you like, Athos.”

“Thank you.” He rises. None of his grace has left him. He turns on the spot, that dancer’s move on the balls of his feet, and his face is marshalled again, though his colour is still high. She finds herself appalled to be running her eyes down his body, looking for evidence of.

_Well, there you have it._

Bloody hell.

“I think,” he says, cautiously, and she’s fairly sure he’s tracked her gaze, “we may need to talk at this juncture.”

“I think,” she says, in a similar tone, feeling vaguely grateful that he hasn’t just run away, “you may be right.”

They cast around for somewhere to sit, and she gestures with a kind of resignation to that broad chair where they started another awkward, serious conversation. They perch at either end and regard each other solemnly.

“I’m sorry,” she says, just as he opens his mouth.

His eyebrows go high. “ _You_ ’re sorry? I can only apologise profusely.”

“What for?”

“For. For losing control.”

“But I made you do so.”

“You weren’t to know.”

“Neither, by the look of it, were you.”

His mouth works briefly. “That’s true enough.”

“Has, hmm.” She screws her fingers together. “Has anything like this happened before?”

“Not… in this kind of context, no. Normally, in battle, I am… difficult to distract.” His frown deepens and his eyes slide sideways. She flashes to a memory that she is fairly sure they’re sharing – that of Athos baiting d’Artagnan for attempting to “cheat” during a sparring session by stripping off his shirt. Since d’Artagnan earned a bruise for his troubles, she’s sure that Athos retained some measure of control in that instance.

Maybe it’s different when it’s in public. Maybe it’s different when it’s not her. Maybe. Ugh, maybe anything…

 _Hush_.

Yes.

 _This isn’t about you_.

I actually know that, thanks.

She looks to his face and it’s clear he’s following a track of thought he is nearly ready to articulate. She waits, face and body open, untwisting her fingers and laying them quietly in her lap.

“I think…” comes eventually.

“Yes?”

“You must understand – I am not a man to… to commonly spend much time exploring my own heart.”

“Though you’ll punish yourself for it well enough.” He looks somewhere between startled and hurt. “I’m sorry, go on.”

He acknowledges that with a slow nod. “I. I think it’s because… _may_ be because – and I don’t mean any offence…”

“Go on…”

“Because you’re a woman. Well,” he says, pauses, then nods. “Yes.”

She chews this over. “And because…” she says, “I’m smaller and weaker and you could make me stop at any time.”

“Probably,” he says. “ _Probably_ make you stop.”

“Chivalry?”

“Maybe.”

“The uncertainty of the thing.” At least it’s nothing to do with his wife.

_Probably._

He shakes his head. He barely has the words for this for himself, but that’s not quite it.

“It’s…” he says, slowly, feeling his way image to image, word to word, “a matter of choice, I think. And. And trust. I can. I can lay down… _mastery_ of myself and then pick it up again when I need to. Or when I no longer need to…” He shakes his head, frowning, “not…”

“It’s all right,” she says, reaching a hand to lay it on his arm. It’s his left arm; her fingers curl over the place where… Best not to think…

_Don’t think of a white dog._

Thank you for that.

He gently lifts her hand off him, holds it lightly.

“Thank you for your patience. Hm. Constance…”

“Yes?”

“Can you forgive me?”

She’s shaking her head again. “I told you, Athos – there’s no need for forgiveness unless I have to ask too. It’s fine. _We_ ’re fine.”

“Good. Good. Er.”

“Though I think that, on the whole, it’s definitely best we discontinue these sessions for a while. Certainly here. At least until –”

“I can be trusted.”

“Oh, would you _stop_ that?!” She gives his hand an admonitory shake.

He bends and kisses her knuckles with the smallest of smiles.

“Have I told you you’re an idiot?”

“Not for…” he casts his mind back. “Well over a week.”

“Well then.”

And his smile broadens at this, hers blooming to meet it.

She rises, and he sees her strength in that moment, in that movement, regal and pragmatic in one, shaking down the fussy severity of her widow weeds.

He doesn’t have to relinquish her hand, he thinks, rising with her. Impulsively, she reaches out the other and holds both of his in hers.

“I have to go.”

He nods, slipping into that aristocratic grace that she doubts very much he ever notices. “Constance,” he says, still serious, but lighter, somehow, “if you should ever have need of me…”

She nods, as if she needs the reminder. “I know where you are.”

“It would be my honour,” he tells her gravely.

“Well, let’s hope it’s because I need someone to trounce at chess, rather than it being for your sword. Um.”

They roll their eyes fondly at each other over burgeoning smirks.

“Until then, Madame,” he says.

“Monsieur.”

He belts himself, collects his outer garments, and heads for the door.

“And Athos?”

He twists, free hand on the doorknob. “Yes?”

“The same goes for me. Should you… ever need me.”

That slow, slanted nod. “Of course.” And then he’s gone.

She allows herself the space of three deep breaths before heading out to rejoin her Queen.

This has every evidence of being a difficult and surprising day, but she knows herself strong enough to meet it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, turns out it’s _waaaay_ easier for me to write out-and-out smut than something like this, though I suspect I will forever be an angst-and-action-scenes addict.
> 
> Thanks for the patience, lovely people. Now I’m off to fill out the details on the endless notes I have for What Comes Next.
> 
> Oh, and if you want to know quite why Athos is so tired and what he’s been wrestling, head off-piste for an explicit interlude [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16033151)

**Author's Note:**

> This one ~~is probably going to~~ updated slowly, because ~~I’m still at~~ I was recovering from a month performing at the Edinburgh Fringe, and then some weird bug thing, ~~but I couldn’t resist writing this any longer, so here it is.~~ so thanks so much for sticking with it. I hope to be less halting of pace in future. Because now, having got this out of my system, I have my sights on that epic I keep hinting at…


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